


Star-Crossed

by Kaylin881



Series: Star Wars Unrequited Soulmarks [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, POV Padmé Amidala, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unrequited Soulmarks, except for the very last section because I couldn't resist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 01:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14201880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaylin881/pseuds/Kaylin881
Summary: Padmé's soulmark is across the hollow at the base of her throat. She covers it with high collars and necklaces and reads books on soulmate theory that say it's good for a soulmark to be so close to the centre of the body and doesn't think about the way she feels breathless when he kisses her.





	Star-Crossed

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first work in what will hopefully be a series set in my Star Wars Soulmate AU. The premise is that everyone is born with a name written somewhere on their body, belonging to the person who will have the biggest impact in their life.

Padmé’s soulmark is scribbled across the base of her throat, the uncertain scrawl of someone unused to signing their name. She spends her tenure as Queen, and later Senator, wearing high collars and chunky necklaces and halter-necked gowns. Even her outfits as a ‘handmaiden’ follow the same pattern: high-necked and all-concealing to aid the deception, although it is not only her own soulmark which needs hiding in those outfits but all of them. No-one needs to know that half of her handmaidens bear her own name—her private name, Padmé Naberrie, not the Amidala state name—on various portions of their skin. They do not need the inevitable investigations into the loyalties of the ones who do not. A handmaiden’s first loyalty should be to her Queen, but Padmé is not so narcissistic as to wish to be the centre of the galaxy for every single one of her closest companions. After all, none of them is hers.

She reads books on soulmate theory that say having a soulmark so close to the centre of your body is a good sign, that it means your relationship will be centred and grounded, that it is more likely to be reciprocated. She doesn’t feel lucky. She feels, sometimes—far too often—like she’s being stifled. Like she can’t breathe for the constant weight of fabric and metal around her neck.

The first time Anakin Skywalker kisses her, she feels breathless for an entirely different reason.

Later, alone in her room at the lake house, she goes digging in the back of her closet and pulls out the dress she had made in a moment of foolish optimism a few years ago. Low-cut to expose everything from her shoulders upwards, it would leave her soulmark on blatant display if she forewent her usual necklaces. She wears it the next day. She’s not sure why; maybe Anakin’s certainty that they’re meant to be together is infecting her. They have a picnic in a meadow near the lake and talk about politics. His eyes keep straying to her neck.

The next time Anakin sees her soulmark is on Tatooine. Beru Whitesun is apologetic as she helps look through Shmi’s closet for something with a high neck, and finds nothing that will fit. Padmé gives in to the inevitable and borrows a blue dress with an embroidered overtunic that’s just a little too long in the sleeves and hangs low over her chest. In the end, after all of their searching for an outfit, Anakin barely looks at her while she’s wearing it. Locked inside his own grief for his mother and tormented by his actions in the Tusken camp, he seems as though he’s not even on the same planet as Padmé, let alone in the same room. She does her best to reach him, but she’s scared the whole time that he’s slipping through her fingers. There’s a lump in her throat making it hard to swallow, and she’s not sure if it’s worry for her soulmate or grief for the memory of a woman who was kind to Padmé the handmaiden for a few short days a decade ago.

They get married on Naboo, overlooking the same lake that witnessed their first kiss. Padmé is in white lace that covers almost every inch of her body, with only her hands, face, neck and upper chest left exposed. Anakin is enthralled, staring down at her in wonder as he reaches out with careful hands to take hold of hers. He’s hesitant over the prosthetic, still new and unfamiliar, so she reaches out to close the last gap herself, wrapping her fingers around the metal ones. When she tilts her chin up to kiss him, the light of the sunset paints a rosy glow across his name on her neck.

Padmé treasures the private moments with her husband—her _husband_ , which is still a novelty after three years of marriage. She loves that she can wear soft, simple gowns with low necklines and let her hair down to tickle her shoulders as they steal a few precious hours for themselves in her Coruscant apartments. She adores the way Anakin’s eyes are constantly drawn to his name on her neck, the way he caresses her, touches her as though she’s something precious and fragile that will break if he presses too hard.

 She is pregnant, and both of them are deliriously happy in short bursts in between Anakin’s duties in the war and her duties in the Senate. The war builds to a crescendo, tensions within the Senate mount, and Padmé’s child grows inside her. And she’s happy, she is, she _is_. It’s just that sometimes she looks at Anakin when he’s woken in the middle of the night for the millionth time and still won’t tell her about the nightmares that put that look in his eyes, and for a moment she isn’t sure who’s in the room with her: her husband, or someone she doesn’t know at all.

By the time she goes to meet him on Mustafar, wearing a harness to relieve the back pain now her belly has grown so large and cumbersome, the man she married has all but disappeared, replaced by a wild-eyed stranger who paces the ground like a caged animal and hurls incoherent accusations at her.

There’s a constriction around her throat and it’s like she’s fourteen years old again, wearing Queen Amidala’s heavy robes of state for the first time, and she can’t breathe. It’s like the moment she stood in a junk shop in the sweltering heat of Tatooine and felt her pulse beat against her neck beneath the high collar of her disguise as she heard a little boy tell her _I’m a person and my name is Anakin_. It’s like that desperate kiss on Geonosis, right before the arena, when they both knew they were about to die and she couldn’t bear to let him go to his death without knowing she loved him back.

It’s like she’s dying. She can’t breathe, and she’s dying, and her last conscious thought as the pressure lets up and she falls to the ground is that of course, this is how she dies. This was always going to be how she died.  

She lives long enough to name her children, names she and Anakin have talked over—fought over—in the last few months. Long enough to be told the names written on their skin and try to laugh and cry at the same time. Even one of those is difficult with a crushed windpipe, she discovers, but both at once is nearly impossible.

***

At her funeral, where she is laid out in state in a hideously expensive coffin and surrounded by flowers, her soulmark is revealed to the world for the first and last time. There is no bruising to either reveal how she died or obscure the black letters inked on her skin. She appears serene, content. Perfect, and perfectly devoted to Anakin Skywalker, the love of her life, the beat of her heart. Of course they were soulmates. It makes perfect sense to anyone who knew them. Of course, both of them died together. How romantic.

Somewhere far away, the thing that used to belong to that name is screaming.


End file.
